Christians, do you think Mother Teresa is going to heaven?

Question

I asked another question about Teresa, but the answers were basically from people saying I out to slander Teresa. On the contrary, I have a lot more respect for her, now that I know she had severe doubts. I respect that even more because her atheism probably came about as she observed the suffering of the poor, and could not feel God meanwhile. It's strange, another prominent theist, and former atheist, Dr. Francis Collins, reports the opposite effect after working in the ER, and became a Christian as a result.
So, do you Christians think that someone who had serious doubts, and probably would have been an atheist if not for her obligation to the Church, will still go to heaven? Does "Pascal's Wager" work... if you just pretend, will that be enough to please God?

Charles, read a few articles on it and you'll see what I mean. While she never left her faith, she did at one point stop praying towards the end of her life. A quote "Where is my faith? Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."
8 years later:
"Such deep longing for God… Repulsed, empty, no faith, no love, no zeal."
What do I labor for?" she asked in one letter. "If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."
So... it was clear she doubted if God exists-- she's not merely asking God why he is allowing this suffering--she is finding it difficult to believe at all--and that's quite remarkable for somebody who presenting such a strong faith in her public life.

Misty-- you are correct of course. I don't know the mind of Mother Teresa. But we have her private letters, which detail the crisis of faith which began soon after she started working with the poor of India. Colins did find his Christian faith after working in the ER, and observing how faith got people through the most difficult times. Mother Teresa, on the other hand, appears to have had hers shaken to the core by similar experiences.

Answer 1

Well considering she died in 1997, she is either there already or not. But to me it doesn't change the kind of humanitarian person that she was.

Answer 2

My guess is that she is going to heaven.

I think you are taking a lot for granted to assume "her atheism" and to assume why she had doubts. Commenting that a prominent doctor had the "opposite effect" again shows you are assuming to know the mind of Mother Teresa...which of course you cannot.

Mother Teresa is not different than any of us...having doubts about God in no way diminishes her Christianity. I'm sorry you see it that way. I do not think you are slandering Mother Teresa, but I do think you do not understand faith nor the truth of Christianity. It does not affect any Christian that Mother Teresa had doubts...it only makes us feel that she was one of us.

Answer 3

Having doubts does not make someone an atheist. Doubts can lead to a strengthened relationship with our Creator.

No one knows the mind of Theresa when she died. Only God knows if she's in heaven, but I would speculate that she had great faith because she questioned. Her faith alone got her into heaven. The good deeds will gain her sainthood.

Answer 4

I am not sure what doubt has to do with this. What I have in mind is Einstein's cosmology. It does not, as of yet, explain the observed acceleration of the expansion of the universe. Why? I have a feeling that his cosmology is fundamentally flawed, though I could very much be wrong about that. Those doubts do not mean that I am not a scientist, nor that I have abandoned science.

Like I said, I am not sure what doubt means in this context.

HTH

Charles

Answer 5

I don't think that taking a deep and thoughtful look at her writings is slandering her at all.

However, I also feel that too many have been quick to label her "an atheist" simply because she struggled with her faith, had difficulties with her prayer life and many times felt estranged from God.

The spiritual life is full of highs and lows. The path to Heaven is long and difficult and there will be times when we are a spiritual desert, but God does not leave us.

And He certainly did not leave His faithful handmaid, Mother Theresa.

Some of the greatest Catholic saints in history had moments of struggle and torment. The great St. Paul wrote in his letters that at times he felt unsure of the future and could not say with certainty he would be in Heaven. "God is my judge" he concluded and left it at that.

What matters is Mother Theresa's lifetime of selfless giving, obedience to God and the Church (a great virtue) and honesty with her spiritual struggles. She will continue to inspire and strengthen believers, and we in turn will continue to hope that will be welcomed into Heaven (if not already).

God bless you.

Answer 6

I believe Mother Teresa to be in heaven today. I also believe the Church will recognize this fact sooner rather than later. As it pertains to her 'dark night of the soul' here are a few quotes from an article I found.

"The dark night of Mother Teresa presents us with an even greater interpretive challenge than her visions and locutions. It means that the missionary foundress who called herself “God’s pencil” was not the God-intoxicated saint many of us had assumed her to be. We may prefer to think that she spent her days in a state of ecstatic mystical union with God, because that would get us ordinary worldlings off the hook. How else could this unremarkable woman, no different from the rest of us, bear to throw her lot in with the poorest of the poor, sharing their meager diet and rough clothing, wiping leprous sores and enduring the agonies of the dying, for so many years without respite, unless she were somehow lifted above it all, shielded by spiritual endorphins? Yet we have her own testimony that what made her self-negating work possible was not a subjective experience of ecstasy but an objective relationship to God shorn of the sensible awareness of God’s presence. "
.
.
.
"Mother Teresa is not the only modern saint to have undergone such a trial of faith; one thinks also of precursors like St. Paul of the Cross (1694-1775), founder of the Passionists, and St. Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641), foundress of the Visitandines, but above all of Mother Teresa’s namesake, St. Thérèse of Lisieux (1873-1897), the French Carmelite famous for her “Little Way.” The parallels between Mother Teresa (Teresa of the Child Jesus) and St. Thérèse (Teresa of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face) are really quite remarkable. Thérèse also made a vow, informally as a young child, and formally on two occasions as a professed Carmelite nun, to refuse nothing to Jesus. Like Mother Teresa, she had longed to be sent forth in the missions as a herald of God’s love; since her frailty prevented this, she rejoiced in being assigned missionaries for whom she prayed and whom she regarded with great affection as her spiritual brothers. She, too, felt multiple calls..."
.
.
.
"Is it fanciful to consider the possibility that Mother Teresa, who died in the same month one hundred years later, who experienced the same ardent call, made the same vow of surrender, suffered the same desolation of faith, and embodied in the face of that dark night the same teaching of fidelity in small things, may have in some way been completing the mission of St. Thérèse? Could it be that this missionary contemplative and this contemplative missionary are companions in a joint work of grace?

However that may be, it was the same objective Christian joy that made Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu become a Saint Teresa for our time, and a saint-maker for our future. When we consider her life and the ongoing life of her community, the Church seems young again, and everything seems possible. If these days are in any sense a dark night for the Church, then Mother Teresa shows the way forward: faith that we are undergoing a purification rather than a free-fall, and fidelity, in small things as well as big, to the vows that bind in order to set free. "

God Bless
Robin

Answer 7

I've been told by Christians that it's not your actions in life that matter, it's whether you believe in Jesus and God or not. So evidently it won't matter to God how much charity and help she provided, she won't go to Heaven because she questioned the faith. Kind of a slap in the face, huh?

Answer 8

Every Christian has doubts. God has given us all free choice. It's when we doubt, and then renew our faith that heaven rejoices all the more.

Answer 9

Well i am not allowed to judge. only God can. but all i can say is, if God wont let that nice old woman into heaven, then i ma headed straight to hell.

Answer 10

If she wants to, I'm sure she'll go to Heaven. But I rather think she'll choose to come back in another guise to continue helping.